Legion

“What’s this?” J.C. said. “Hey, Achmed. You’re not going to blow the plane up, are you?”

“My name is Kalyani,” she said. “And I am most certainly not going to blow anything up.”

“Huh,” J.C. said. “That’s disappointing.” He settled back and closed his eyes—or pretended to. He kept one eye cracked toward Kalyani.

“Why do we keep him around?” Ivy asked, stretching, coming out of her nap.

“Your head keeps going back and forth,” Monica said. “I feel like I’m missing entire conversations.”

“You are,” I said. “Monica, meet Kalyani. A new aspect, and the reason we needed that empty seat.”

Kalyani perkily held out her hand toward Monica, a big grin on her face.

“She can’t see you, Kalyani,” I said.

“Oh, right!” Kalyani raised both hands to her face. “I’m so sorry, Mister Steve. I am very new to this.”

“It’s okay. Monica, Kalyani will be our interpreter in Israel.”

“I am a linguist,” Kalyani said, bowing.

“Interpreter . . .” Monica said, glancing at the book I’d tucked away. A book of Hebrew syntax, grammar, and vocabulary. “You just learned Hebrew.”

“No,” I said. “I glanced through the pages enough to summon an aspect who speaks it. I’m useless with languages.” I yawned, wondering if there was time left in the flight to pick up Arabic for Kalyani as well.

“Prove it,” Monica said.

I raised an eyebrow toward her.

“I need to see,” Monica said. “Please.”

With a sigh, I turned to Kalyani. “How do you say: ‘I would like to practice speaking Hebrew. Would you speak to me in your language?’”

“Hm . . . ‘I would like to practice speaking Hebrew’ is somewhat awkward in the language. Perhaps, ‘I would like to improve my Hebrew’?”

“Sure.”

“Ani rotzeh leshapher et ha’ivrit sheli,” Kalyani said.

“Damn,” I said. “That’s a mouthful.”

“Language!” Ivy called.

“It is not so hard, Mister Steve. Here, try it. Ani rotzeh leshapher et ha’ivrit sheli.”

“Any rote zeele shaper hap . . . er hav . . .” I said.

“Oh my,” Kalyani said. “Tat is . . . that is very dreadful. Perhaps I will give you one word at a time.”

“Sounds good,” I said, waving over one of the flight attendants, the one who had spoken Hebrew to give the safety information at the start of our flight.

She smiled at us. “Yes?”

“Uh . . .” I said.

“Ani,” Kalyani said patiently.

“Ani,” I repeated.

“Rotzeh.”

“Rotzeh . . .”

It took a little getting used to, but I made myself known. The stewardess even congratulated me. Fortunately, translating her words into English was much easier—Kalyani gave me a running translation.

“Oh, your accent is horrible, Mister Steve,” Kalyani said as the stewardess moved on. “I’m so embarrassed.”

“We’ll work on it,” I said. “Thanks.”

Kalyani smiled at me and gave me a hug, then tried to give one to Monica, who didn’t notice. Finally, the Indian woman took a seat next to Ivy, and the two began chatting amicably, which was a relief. It always makes my life easier when my hallucinations get along.

“You already spoke Hebrew,” Monica accused. “You knew it before we started flying, and you spent the last few hours refreshing yourself.”

“Believe that if you want.”

“But it’s not possible,” she continued. “A man can’t learn an entirely new language in a matter of hours.”

I didn’t bother to correct her and say I hadn’t learned it. If I had, my accent wouldn’t have been so horrible, and Kalyani wouldn’t have needed to guide me word by word.

“We’re on a plane hunting a camera that can take pictures of the past,” I said. “How is it harder to believe that I just learned Hebrew?”

“Okay, fine. We’ll pretend you did that. But if you’re capable of learning that quickly, why don’t you know every language—every subject, everything—by now?”

“There aren’t enough rooms in my house for that,” I said. “The truth is, Monica, I don’t want any of this. I’d gladly be free of it, so that I could live a more simple life. I sometimes think the lot of them will drive me insane.”

“You . . . aren’t insane, then?”

“Heavens no,” I said. I eyed her. “You don’t accept that.”

“You see people who aren’t there, Mister Leeds. It’s a difficult fact to get around.”

“And yet, I live a good life,” I said. “Tell me. Why would you consider me insane, but the man who can’t hold a job, who cheats on his wife, who can’t keep his temper in check? You call him sane?”

“Well, perhaps not completely . . .”

“Plenty of ‘sane’ people can’t manage to keep it all under control. Their mental state—stress, anxiety, frustration—gets in the way of their ability to be happy. Compared to them, I think I’m downright stable. Though I do admit, it would be nice to be left alone. I don’t want to be anyone special.”

“And that’s where all of this came from, isn’t it?” Monica asked. “The hallucinations?”

“Oh, you’re a psychologist now? Did you read a book on it while we were flying? Where’s your new aspect, so I can shake hands with her?”

Monica didn’t rise to the bait. “You create these delusions so that you can foist things off on them. Your brilliance, which you find a burden. Your responsibility—they have to drag you along and make you help people. This lets you pretend, Mister Leeds. Pretend that you are normal. But that’s the real delusion.”

I found myself wishing the flight would hurry up and be finished.

“I’ve never heard that theory before,” Tobias said softly from behind. “Perhaps she has something, Stephen. We should mention it to Ivy—”

“No!” I snapped, turning on him. “She’s dug in my mind enough already.”

I turned back. Monica had that look in her eyes again, the look a “sane” person gets when they deal with me. It’s the look of a person forced to handle unstable dynamite while wearing oven mitts. That look . . . it hurts far more than the disease itself does.

“Tell me something,” I said to change the topic. “How’d you let Razon get away with this?”

“It isn’t like we didn’t take precautions,” Monica said dryly. “The camera was locked up tightly, but we couldn’t very well keep it completely out of the hands of the man we were paying to build it.”

“There’s more here,” I said. “No offense intended, Monica, but you’re a sneaky corporate type. Ivy and J.C. figured out ages ago that you’re not an engineer. You’re either a slimy executive tasked with handling undesirable elements, or you’re a slimy security forces leader who does the same.”

“What part of that am I not supposed to take offense at?” she asked coolly.

“How did Razon have access to all of the prototypes?” I continued. “Surely you copied the design without him knowing. Surely you fed versions of the camera to satellite studios, so they could break them apart and reverse engineer them. I find it quite a stretch to believe he somehow found and destroyed all of those.”

She tapped her armrest for a few minutes. “None of them work,” she finally admitted.

“You copied the designs exactly?”

“Yes, but we got nothing from it. We asked Razon, and he said that there were still bugs. He always had an